Chapter 23 Bird #2
“We’re in my house, Jessa. In my kitchen. They’re playing out there. It’s fine,” I whisper. “Besides, if memory serves me, we did a whole lot more than kissing at your house.”
She shakes her head. “Maybe I should just go?”
“No, please, don’t go. I promise I won’t try to kiss you again,” I say, dragging my finger in an X over my chest. “Cross my heart?”
“Okay,” she agrees, adding, “You know, we were in my bedroom, though. Alone. No one was going to come in. That’s a lot different.”
“I know,” I tell her as I go to the fridge for the juice. “I get it.”
I put on the twins’ favorite Barney tape and Jessa helps me clean up the spilled Cheerios and put their toys in their baskets, and I try to make my home a little more presentable.
They murmur along with the songs and look back at us on the couch—where we sit a full cushion apart from each other—to say words and point at the TV, making sure we’re also paying close attention.
The show cuts to a scene where Barney and friends all go outside, and the girls immediately start begging to go out too.
“Ow-eyed,” they keep repeating. “Ow-eyed, Merd.”
“No, not right now,” I tell them, and they get really whiny.
“Go ow-eyed, Merd. Now!”
“What do they want?” Jessa asks.
“They want to go outside,” I translate for her. “Outside, Merd… Bird.”
“Aww, Merd,” Jessa coos. “Well, why can’t they go outside?”
“Oh, um…” I have to think about it for a second.
Everybody’s always saying no around here.
There’s always something else that needs to be done, or no one has the energy or time or patience for yeses.
I feel bad for the twins when Mom and Daniel seem to just not have enough to go around.
“I was hoping they’d go down for a nap soon so we could go to my room.
Wink, wink. But I guess we can take them outside, if you don’t mind. ”
“I don’t mind. You don’t have to keep asking me that, Merd,” she says with a wicked grin as she stands up.
In our janky backyard, Jessa immediately starts romping around with Aimee and Ava.
Kicking at the leaves and playing with the random toys they hand her, being enthusiastic about the things they say even though I know she can’t understand 90 percent of it.
I start to rake up some of the leaves that are blanketing the entire yard.
“Oh!” Suddenly a cascade of leaves is pouring over me like a waterfall.
When I turn around, Jessa is finishing dumping a summer sand bucket full of leaves over my head.
The girls are laughing—belly laughing—hysterically squealing, “Uh-den, uh-den!”
“Again?” Jessa asks them. I guess she’s catching on to their toddler dialect. “Should we do it again?”
They scream in response, bouncing up and down. This time she bends over and grabs a whole armful of leaves and tosses them up into the air over me. The girls try to copy her, and manage to throw their own tiny handfuls at me.
“Why are you all ganging up on me?” I ask, pretending to be offended. “I think we should get Jessa!”
Soon, we’re all running around the yard, chasing each other with bundles of leaves.
Jessa is the one to initiate jumping into the big pile I raked up.
I jump in next to her, and then the twins are shrieking and dive-bombing us over and over, until we’re all just lying there in the leaves, side by side, looking up at the sky.
The girls start pointing at clouds and saying what the shapes look like.
Unicorn. Dinosaur. Flower. Dog. Elephant. All in their own form of garbled English.
I lose track of what they’re saying because Jessa reaches for my hand in the leaves. I turn my head to look at her and she’s got such a bright, gorgeous smile on her face. I wish we could stay like this forever.
“I was just thinking,” she begins. “We should go to Boston—take a road trip. Go find your dad’s restaurant, you know?”
“What, just show up? Uninvited? Unexpected?”
She shrugs. “Yeah.”
“I couldn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because. What if he doesn’t even want to see me?”
She frowns like she hasn’t considered this. “I don’t think that would happen.”
I look up at the clouds and try to imagine what that might feel like, this hypothetical reunion I’ve been dreaming about for years.
It takes me a minute to realize that it’s gotten quiet.
I sit up quickly, thinking somehow I let the girls slip away, but they’re both just lying there, asleep in the disheveled pile of leaves.
Jessa sits up too, and gently plucks a few leaves out of my hair.
“Well, they’re finally napping,” she says.
She helps me carry them into the house and tuck them into their cribs.
Quietly, I bring the baby monitor with us and we creep up the stairs to my room.
I hold my bedroom door open for her and feel my insides clenching as she walks in.
Her room is epic. Mine is pathetic. Her house is big and orderly and clean. Mine is, well, not.
“Ha,” she breathes. “Let me guess which side is yours.”
“It’s bad, I know.” I try to preempt whatever she must be thinking.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s nothing compared to yours.”
“I wasn’t comparing,” she says, and reaches past me to push the door shut.
She steps in close to me, and god, the way she’s looking at me already has my breathing coming faster.
Then she brings her hand to my face, her mouth to my neck, her lips grazing my lips, sparking a little jolt of electricity to my heart that makes me pull her closer.
Her hands are strong yet gentle, roaming over my clothes, pressing her body into mine until we’re up against the door—every touch lighting me up from the inside.
My brain is buzzing, losing its ability to think anything as she as she peels my jacket down my arms, letting it fall to the floor inside out while she rushes to untuck my shirt from my pants—her touch the perfect balance of reckless and careful.
Then her hands up my back, finally, finally on my skin, her warmth becoming my warmth.
I walk us over to my bed and take her jacket off too, and I try really hard not to look at Olivia’s side of the room.
We sit close to each other and I kiss her, slower now, softer, until we’re lying down, and she’s pulling me on top of her, my thigh nestled between her legs.
She moans quietly and sighs against my neck, sending chills through my whole body.
I feel her hands in between us, reaching for the button on my jeans.
She’s gazing at my face when I open my eyes, this easy smile gracing her lips.
“Is this okay?” she asks, eyes glancing down to where her hands are lowering my zipper.
Oh my god, it’s okay. It would be more than okay—it would be perfect—if not for the creeping distraction burrowing into my thoughts.
Because I can’t quite ignore Olivia’s side of the room, or the entire world represented by Olivia’s side of the room.
“Um. Y-yeah, but, but…”
She pulls her hands back and puts them in my hair instead. My mind swims, heady with the all these competing physical sensations, the worry building up inside me. “But what?” she asks, out of breath, her voice wispy, dreamy.
I lean over onto my elbow. “I just wish we didn’t have to worry about getting ‘caught.’ ” I bend two fingers in my best air-quote gesture.
She props herself up on her elbows and says, “I know,” her voice more embodied now. “And I know you think I’m being ridiculous or something, but—”
“No, I don’t think that. Sometimes I just start getting self-conscious, like maybe you don’t want anyone to know because you’re… y-you know, embarrassed of me or something. Or worse, that you don’t want to t-touch me or, or kiss me.”
She sits up fast. “Are you kidding?”
I shake my head, too embarrassed of myself and my own stupid insecurity to even verbally respond.
“Bird, look at us,” she says, looking down at our bodies still half entwined in my bed. “I can’t keep my hands off you. I want you. Like, all the time. My grades are literally slipping because I’m daydreaming in class, just replaying every minute we’ve spent together.”
“Really?” I ask her, hating the hopeful little sappy girl inside me who’s twirling around and doing cartwheels in my mind.
“Of course!” she says, and her voice catches. “Don’t you think it kills me that we can’t go parading down the halls holding hands or that I can’t just come and bring you flowers at your locker or kiss you after class or even call you my girlfriend?”
“It d-does?”
She nods as she looks at me, and her eyes are turning wet and shiny.
“Jessa.” I touch her face. “Then let’s just do what we want; screw everyone else, right?”
She takes my hand and moves it from her cheek, sits up with her legs hanging off the bed, then takes in a deep breath and sighs.
I pull myself up to sit beside her, and try to explain.
“I heard what you said before. Like, of course I know there are going to be assholes out there who will say shit and be horrible, but I hate keeping this a secret, like we’re ashamed or doing something wrong, when I’m not ashamed. And we’re not doing any—”
“Bird, just stop,” she says quietly, but firmly. “Stop. If all we had to worry about was the shit people say, then fuck it, yeah. But we could get hurt. I don’t know how to make you understand this. You could get hurt for being with me.”
“Jessa, I don’t care.”
“I wish you’d stop fucking saying that!”
“Hey—”
“No. You need to care. And you need to listen to me. People like us get attacked every day. Killed. Okay? This is serious.”
“But—”
“No,” she says again. “No. Just stop saying ‘but.’ Last year, don’t you remember in the news—that college kid in Wyoming?”
“You—y-you me-mean Matthew…?”
“Shepard,” she finishes. “Yeah. He was murdered. Tortured and murdered, for nothing. For just existing. All right?” she says, and she’s crying now, her words starting to get choppy.
“I’m not just making this stuff up. When that happened last year, do you know how many people came up to me and told me he deserved it?
How many people told me that should happen to me, too? ”
“No,” I tell her, reaching for her hand. And I can barely get the word past the lump of tears working its way from my heart. “I did-didn’t know that.”
“And I don’t want you to ever have to know how that feels. I just want you to be safe and protected, even if that means we can’t be together. I would rather have that than anything bad ever happening to you.”
I put my arm around her and she falls against my side, tucking her head under my chin.
“Come here,” I tell her, and we lie back on my bed together.
I hold her so close and hum and rock her a little while she continues to silently cry.
I fight hard not to say the words I so want to say to her right now.
But I think them. I think them over and over and over and hope that she can feel them anyway.
She falls asleep, but I’m wide awake. Because I can see the line now. That invisible thread that connects us, hearts full and beating, here in my bedroom, to all that hate and darkness and death out there. Instead of fear or sadness and tears, I’m just numb.
Jessa startles awake to my mom’s voice over the static of the baby monitor, talking to Aimee and Ava. She bolts upright, saying, “Oh shit. Bird? Liv!”
“It’s okay. It’s okay. My mom just got home. It’s okay; we’re still alone.”
“Fuck,” she breathes, and runs a hand through her hair. “Okay. Um, okay, I should probably go.”
We straighten ourselves up before heading downstairs. I smooth her hair and she laughs as she points to my pants, zipper and button still undone. I look in the mirror and decide my hair can’t pass for not having been rolling around in bed and pull it into a quick ponytail instead.
She reaches for the doorknob, but I place my hand on her wrist—I can feel her pulse racing. “Wait a sec.”
“What?”
I kiss her.
She kisses me back but pulls away first, lets her forehead rest against my collarbone for a second. When she looks up again, she kisses me one more time and then opens the door.
Downstairs, Bailey is home from his after-school activities, playing on his Game Boy, and doesn’t notice us entering the living room. “Hey, Bay,” I call over to him anyway. “This is Jessa.”
“Hey,” Jessa offers. But he just grunts a syllable in return.
The twins come tumbling out of the hallway, my mom trailing behind them.
“Oh, hello,” she says, looking between me and Jessa. “Who’s this?”
“This is Jessa, my… my friend.”
“Jessa, nice to meet you. Are you a senior too?”
“Um, yes. Yep. Senior too. We have journalism class together.”
“Well, I was just thinking I don’t feel like cooking. Anybody feel like pizza?”
To this, Bailey shouts, “Yes! Pepperoni.”
“Sure,” I answer.
“Jessa?” Mom says, scoring a couple of points in my book for actually listening and remembering how to pronounce her name. “You’re welcome to stay for pizza.”
“Oh, no, I should get home. But thank you.” I hand Jessa her bag, and it’s an upside-down feeling to hear her casually say, “So, see ya in class tomorrow,” after everything.
“Right. O-okay. Bye, Jessa.”
I close the door behind her and turn around. Mom has the pizza place menu in her hand and when she glances up, she looks at me for a moment. A real moment. “You okay?” she asks.
I wish I could tell her no. I wish I could tell her the truth.
But the moment passes and she looks down, and just as I’m turning to go back upstairs, she says, “Jessa seems cool.”
“Yeah,” is all I can say.
“Interesting hair,” she adds.
“I like it,” I tell her, with perhaps a bit too much attitude.
“I didn’t say I didn’t like it, Birdie. Jeez, I just said—”
“I’m gonna go upstairs, finish my homework.”
“Okay, I’ll call you down when the pizza gets here.”
I go upstairs and lie in the dark and breathe in the scent of Jessa on my pillow. Like Irish Spring soap and the autumn leaves outside. And as if a switch is flipped inside me, I start crying.